This information comes from the Four Hours Work Week book by Tim Ferriss. Refer to the book for authoritative information. Visit http://www.fourhourblog.com for definition of various terms and concepts.

What is the definition of NR?

NR: New Rich, are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyle in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobily

What is the objective of the NR?

Create freedom of time and place, and use both however they want. To free time and automate income.

What is the currency of the NR?

Time and mobility

How do the NR achieve their goals?

Leverage currency differences, outsourcing their life, and disappearing. They use the economic sleight-of-hand.

Does Tim Ferris recommend you to abandon the daily glass of red wine for a million dollars 50 years from now?

No.

I rather have the wine. I won't ask you to choose between your enjoyment today or money later. I believe you can have both now.

Why do the NR call themselves deal-maker?

They use the acronym DEAL. The idea behind DEAL is examine and challenge every conventional wisdom.

What is the manifesto of a deal maker?

The manifesto of a deal-maker is simple: Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn't require being unethical.

What is the principle belief of the NR?

People don't want to be millionaires. They want to experience what they believe only millions can buy. One million dollars in the bank isn't the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.

What are the 3 ingredients of luxury lifestyle design?

Time

Income

Mobility

What does DEAL abbreviate for?

D: Definition. Defining what you want. Turn misguided common sense upside down and introduce the rules and objectives of the new game. It replaces self-defeating assumptions and explains conceptions such as relative wealth and eustress.

E: Elimination. Eliminate the unimportant stuff. Do more of the important stuff. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective — doing less — is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest. Before you can separate the wheat from the chaff and eliminate activities, you will need to try a lot to identify what pulls the most weight. Throw it all up on the wall and see what sticks. That is part of the process, but it should not take more than a month or two.

A: Automation. Puts the cash flow on auto pilot using geographical arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of non-decision. This also include removing yourself as a bottleneck.

L: Liberation. The mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. The concept of mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel. It is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location.

What does the letter D in DEAL abbreviate for?

Definition: Defining what you want. Turn misguided common sense upside down and introduce the rules and objectives of the new game. It replaces self-defeating assumptions and explains conceptions such as relative wealth and eustress.

What does the letter E in DEAL abbreviate for?

Elimination: Eliminate the unimportant stuff. Do more of the important stuff. Kills the obsolete notion of time management once and for all. This technique center around the concept of "selective ignorance", developing a low information diet, and otherwise ignoring the un-important.

What does the letter A in DEAL abbreviate for?

Automation: Puts the cash flow on auto pilot using geographical arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of non-decision. This also include removing yourself as a bottleneck.

What does the letter L in DEAL abbreviate for?

Liberation: The mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. The concept of mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel. It is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location.

This is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location. This focus on mobility.

What is DELA?

It is the same as DEAL, except that letter A and letter L are reversed. It is the intermediate process that you should use to transform yourself into an NR. Most bosses are less than pleased if you spend one hour in the office each day, and employees should therefore read the steps in the entrepreneurially minded DEAL order but implement them as DELA. If you decide to remain in your current job, it is necessary to create freedom of location before you cut your work hours by 80%.

The general process of joining the NR is D-E-A-L, in that order, but for employees that intent on remaining employees for now need to implement the process as D-E-L-A. The reason is related to the environment. The need to Liberate themselves from the office environment before they can work ten hours a week, for example, because the expectation in that environment is that you will be in constant motion from 9 to 5. Even if you produce twice the results you had in the past, if you're working a quarter of the hours of your colleagues, there is a good chance of receiving a pink slip. Even if you work 10 hours a week and produce twice the results of people working 40 hours a week, the collective request will be "Work 40 hours a week and produce 8 times the results." This is an endless game and one you want to avoid. Therefore, you will want to Liberate yourselves from the office environment first.

What are the differences between the Deferrers (D) and the NR?

Who are the NR?

The NR are the people who have complete freedom of what to do, when to do it, and where to do it, and with whom to do it with. They have complete freedom of location and time. They are not restricted to a single location even though they do not want to travel. They can work from home, or remotely perhaps from a vacation home whenever they want.

The NR aims to distribute mini-retirements throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the foolish gold retirement. Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive and thrive. By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it. Personally, I now aim for one month of oversea relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.

What are the rules of the NR?

Retirement is the worst-case scenario.

Interest and Energy are cyclical. The NR aims to distribute mini-retirements throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the foolish gold retirement. Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive and thrive. By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It's the perfect example of having your cake and eating it. Personally, I now aim for one month of oversea relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.

Less is not laziness. Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is not laziness.

Focus on being productive instead of busy.

The timing is never right. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up all the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it is important to you, and you want to do it "eventually", just do it and correct course along the way.

What is the first step to become an NR?

Replace assumptions. To join the movement, you will need to learn a new lexicon and recalibrate direction using a compass for an unusual world. From reverting responsibility to jettisoning the entire concept of "success," we need to change the rules.

I just ask him to do one simple thing consistently without fail: At least 3 times per day, at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question:

Am I being productive or just active? Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?

He eliminate all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.

Be ruthless. Cut the fat as much as I possibly can.

Learn to ask "if this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?" Don't ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities. Compile your to-do list for tomorrow no later than this evening. Do not use Outlook or computerized to-do lists because it is possible to add an infinite number of items. I use a standard piece of paper folded in half 3 times, which fit perfectly in the pocket and limits you to noting only a few items. There should never be more than two mission-critical items to complete each day. Never. It just isn't necessary if they're actually high-impact. If you are stuck trying to decide between multiple items that all seem crucial, look at each in turn and ask yourself "if this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?". To counter the seeming urgent, ask yourself: "What will happen if I don't do this, and is it worth putting off the important to do it?". If you haven't already accomplish at least one important task in the day, don't spend the last business hour returning a DVD to avoid a $5 late charge. Get the important task done and pay the $5 fine.

Do not multi-task. It does not work. If you prioritize appropriately, there is no need to multi-task. As stated, you should have, at most, 2 primary goals or tasks per day. Do them separately from start to finish without distraction. Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration, poorer net results, and less gratification.

Use Parkinson's Law to a macro and micro level to accomplish more in less time. Shorten schedules and deadlines to necessitate focused action. On a weekly and daily macro level, attempt to take Monday and / or Friday off, as well as leave work by 4pm. This will focus you to prioritize more effectively and quite possibly develop a social life. On a micro task level, limit the number of items on your to-do list and use impossibly short deadlines to force immediate action while ignoring the unimportant. If you do work online or near an online computer, http://e.ggtimer.com is a convenient countdown timer.

I usually check business e-mail for about an hour each Monday, and I never check voicemail when abroad. Never ever. But what if someone has an emergency? It doesn't happen. My contacts know that I don't respond to emergencies, so emergencies somehow don't exist or don't come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.

It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.

Read the headlines instead of the entire newspaper, magazines, etc.

Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time. See page 95.

Never check email first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11am.

Check your email twice per day.

Beg for forgiveness, don't ask for permission.

Reduce meeting time.

Keep it short and focused

Resolve to keep those around you focused and avoid all meeting that do not have clear objectives.

Meeting should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem. If someone proposes that you meet wiht them or set a time to talk on the phone, ask that person to send you an email with an agenda to define the purpose.

Empower others to act without interrupting you.

Set the rules in your favor. Limit access to your time. Force people to define their requests before spending time with them, and batch routine menial tasks to prevent postponement of more important projects. Do not let people interrupt you. Find your focus and you'll find your lifestyle.

Eliminate before you delegate.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Refine rules and processes before adding people. Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production. Using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined. If you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off and assign your VA (virtual assistant) to do that for you, it doesn't improve the order of the universe.

On a lighter note, have some fun with it. Have someone in Bangalore or Shanghai send emails to your friends as your personal concierge to set lunch dates or similar basics. Harass your boss with odd phone calls in strong accents from unknown numbers. Being effective doesn't mean being serious all the time. It's fun being in control for a change. Get a bit of repression off your chest so it doesn't turn into a complex later.

See page 133 through page 135 for a list of things (both business and personal) that can be outsourced / delegated to remote virtual assistants.

What are people doing to change their lives?

Buy a boat and set sail around the world. Julie and Marc spent 15 months exploring the globe from Venice, to Polynesia. It cost them between $18k and $19k, less than the rent and baguettes in Paris. Recouping their initial investment had been part of the plan. Most people would consider this impossible. Then again, most people don't know that more than 300 families set sail from France each year do the same. The trip had been a dream for almost two decades, relegated to the back of the line behind an ever-growing list of responsibilities. Each passing moment brought a new list of reasons for putting it off.

Find a place in the mountain and ski all year long, using income from …

My mini-retirement brought us both to live at an alternative boarding school full of creative lifestyle redesigning children and staff in a gorgeous Florida forest with a spring-fed pond and plenty of sunshine. You can easily search for alternative schools or traditional schools that might accept your children during your stay. Alternative schools often see themselves as supportive communities and are exceptionally welcoming. You might even find an opportunity to work at a school where you could experience a new environment with your child.

Write e-books, sky dive, backpack through South America, sell all the clutter

What would Tim Ferris do?

Look outside the choices presented to you.

Beating the game, not playing the game. Look for fine print. Look for unexploited areas. Bent the rule. Challenge the rule. Challenge the conventional rules, wisdom. Read the rules and look for unexploited opportunities. Doing uncommon things within the rules. The important distinction is that between official rules and self-imposed rules. Stretch the rules or pushing the limit of the rules. Sports evolve when sacred cows are killed, when basic assumptions are tested. The same is true in life and in lifestyle.

When is the best time to make cold calls?

8:00am - 8:30am and 6:00pm - 6:30pm. When I was in data storage sales, my first gig out of college, I realized that most cold calls didn't get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00am - 8:30am and 6:00pm - 6:30pm for a total of 1 hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings as the senior sales executives who called from 9 - 5. In other words, I got twice the result for 1/8 the time.

What are the benefits of coming out from top academic institutions? What are the benefits of not coming out from top academic institution?

Top academic institution are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15 through 30 years of soul crushing work.

What does a millionaire do that a cubicle dweller doesn't?

Follow an uncommon set of rules

What is the definition of freedom multiplier?

Freedom multiplier: Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of Ws you control in your life:

What you do

When you do it

Where do you do it

and with Whom you do it with.

What do the NR have to do with replacing assumptions?

The NR constantly challenge the status quo.

How to become an NR?

Use the DEAL or DELA process depending on your particular circumstance.

Replace assumptions.

Challenge the status quo.

Look for unexploited opportunities.

Push the boundaries. Challenge conventional wisdom.

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit - aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer.

Define the worst case, accept it, and do it. Resolve to do one thing everyday that you fear.

What does ADD abbreviate for?

Adventure Deficit Disorder.

If you manage to ignore doubters and start your own business, will ADD disappear?

No. It will take a different form.

What do the NR really want?

Excitement.

What is dreamlining?

Dreamlining: applies timelines to dreams. It is like goal setting but differ in several aspects:

The goals shifts from ambiguous wants to define steps

The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective

It focus on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and nut just owning enviable things.

Create 2 timelines — 6 months and 12 months and list up to five things you dream of having, including but not limited to material wants (houses, cars, clothing, jewelries, etc), being (a great cook, be fluent in … language), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots). If you have difficulty identifying what you want in each category, as most will, consider what you hate or fear and write down the opposite. Do not limit yourself, and do not concern yourself with how these things will be accomplished. For now, it is not important. The is an exercise in reverse repression. Don't rush. Think about it for a few minutes.

See page 57 through 63 of the four hour work week book and the four hour blog

What are the NR believes?

Retirement is the worst case scenario insurance. It is not the goal.

Interest and energy are cyclical. The NR aim to distribute mini-retirements throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the fool's gold of retirement. One month oversea relocation or high intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every 2 months of work projects. Notice that NR still have to work, and the amount of time that they spend on working may still be more than the amount of time they spend on leisure. If you do not like what you are doing, you should change career.

Doing less meaningless work so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance.

The timing is never right. Don't put off things that are important to you. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it is important to you, and you want to do it "eventually", just do it and correct course a long the way.

Ask for forgiveness, not permission if it isn't going to devastate those around you. Asking for permission seems to give it more importance than it really is, and people will take time to decide it, and people may fear that they may make wrong decision. If you are sure that it will not devastate those around you, go ahead, take the calculated risk, and ask for forgiveness if it doesn't turn out the way you expect it.

Emphasize on strengths. Don't fix weaknesses. It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strength instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will at best become mediocre.

Things in excess become undesirable. NR are not interested in creating an excess of idle time, but positive use of free time doing what you want as opposed to what you are obligated to do.

Money alone is not the solution.

Relative income is more important than absolute income. Relative income use 2 variables: dollars and time.

Eustress is good. Role models who expand our sphere of comfortable action are example of eustress. The more eustress we can create or apply to our lives, the sooner we can actualize our dreams. Not all stress are bad. Eliminate distress, and find or create eustress.

Conquering fears = Defining fears. What is the worst thing that can happen to me if I do …? How can I recover from it?

To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be.

Enjoy life now. Don't save it all for the end.

Action: Develop the most important habit of those who excel: action. Nothing will come to you without action.

Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

Automate cashflow. The business should finance and support my lifestyle, not the other way around.

Money is not the goal. Excitement is.

Look at those who are 15 or 20 years in the same track ahead of you. See what they have, their lifestyle, etc, and decide if that is what you want. Are you turning into the bold fat man in the red BMW.

Get unrealistic.

Think big

What does the letter E in DEAL mean for an entrepreneur?

E abbreviate for Elimination. It means eliminating the unimportant stuffs, and focusing on the important stuff. The goal is to decrease the amount of work you do while increasing the revenue. This will set up the stage for replacing yourself with Automation, which in turn permits Liberation.

Why is Pareto's law important to NR?

Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? Which customers are causing the most pain for me?

Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

Who are the 20% of people who produce 80% of my enjoyment and propel me forward, and which 20% cause 80% of my depression, anger, and second-guessing?

This allows NR to separate the unimportant stuffs from the important stuffs, thus allows the NR to focus on the important stuffs.

For the entire day, I put aside everything seemingly urgent and did the most intense truth-baring analysis possible, applying these questions to everything from my friends to customers and advertising to relaxation activities. Don't expect to find you're doing everything right. The truth often hurts. The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so that you can multiply them. In the 24 hours that followed, I made several simple but emotionally difficult decision that literally changed my life forever and enabled the lifestyle I now enjoy.

The first decision I made is an excellent example of how dramatic and fast the ROI of this analytical fat-cutting can be: I stopped contacting 95% of my customers and fired 2%, leaving me with the top 3% of producers to profile and duplicate.

Out of more than 120 wholesale customers, a mere 5 were bringing in 95% of the revenue. I was spending 98% of my time chasing the remainder, as the aforementioned 5 ordered regularly without any follow-up calls, persuasion, or cajoling. In other words, I was working because I felt as though I should be doing something from 9 to 5. I didn't realize that working every hour from 9 to 5 isn't the goal. It's simply the structure most people use, whether it is necessary or not. I had a severe case of work-for-work (W4W), the most-hated acronym in the NR vocabulary.

You'll always have a few of these, and it is a quandary that causes all sorts of problems, not the least of which are self-hatred and depression. Up to that point, I had taken their browbeating, insults, time-consuming arguments, and tirades as a cost of doing business. I realized during the 80/20 analysis that these two people were the source of nearly all my unhappiness and anger throughout the day, and it usually spilled over into my personal time, keeping me up at night. I finally concluded the obvious: The effect on my self-esteem and state of mind just wasn't worth the financial gain. I didn't need the money for any particular reason, and I had assumed that I needed to take it. The customers are always right, aren't they? It is part of doing business, right? Not always. Not when it come to taking insults, and sacrificing your self-esteem. I fired them, and enjoy every second of it.

I then identified the common characteristics of my top-five customers and secured three or so similarly profiled buyers in the following week. More customers does not automatically mean more income. More customers is not the goal, and often translates into 90% more housekeeping and a paltry 1-3% increase in income. Make no mistake. Maximum income from minimal necessary effort (including minimum number of customers) is the primary goal. I duplicated my strengths, in this case, my top producers, and focused on increasing the size and frequency of their orders.

The end result: I went from chasing and appeasing 120 customers to simply receiving large orders from 8, with absolutely no pleading phone calls or e-mail haranguing. My monthly income increased from $30K to $60K in four weeks and my weekly hours immediately dropped from over 80 to approximately 15. Most importantly, I was happy with myself and felt both optimistic and liberated.

See page 70 through page 75 of the 4 hours work week book.

In which areas of business should I apply the Pareto analysis?

All.

Advertising

Online affiliates and partners

See page 70 through page 75 of the 4 hours work week book.

For an employee intending to become an NR, what is his first and primary goal?

Negotiating a remote work arrangement (free himself from the office environment) instead of just collecting paychecks. The best employees have the most leverage.

What is Parkinson's Law?

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of imminent deadline… The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus. See page 77 of the four hours work week book.

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversion of each other:

Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (Pareto's Law)

Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law)

The best solution is to use both together. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadline. If you haven't identified the mission critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes important. Even if you know what is critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace it, leaving you at the end of the day with nothing accomplished.